Chapter 5

My flight back to Kansas from Greece was delayed on its last leg by thunderstorms and tornado warnings. I was relieved. I dreaded having to face up to my husband. He had to suspect that the extra days I had stayed in Greece had not been devoted to a study of ancient Greek monuments. Nor did I get my tanned-all-over body while admiring icons in Greek churches.

He was waiting for me at the airport. He kissed me on the cheek and led me to our car – a nice two-year old automobile that my earnings had permitted us to buy. I was chatty, covering up my nervousness with a line of chatter, asking about this and that and getting mostly grunts in return. It didn't look good.

"Rachel is pregnant," he said as we left the airport and entered the interstate highway heading west toward our home in Arapaho, two hours away.

"Oh, shit!" I answered. I put my hand over my mouth. I had to watch my language. I was back in Kansas. It was time to resume my role as a sweet, soft-spoken, humble preacher's wife.

"She told you?" I asked. I was disturbed that our seventeen-year old daughter would share such news with her father rather than waiting for her mother to come home.

"Yes, she was vomiting. I told her I was going to take her to see the doctor. She blurted out that she was pregnant and she couldn't go the doctor in Arapaho." We only had two doctors in town – and we knew both of them personally.

"When was this?"

"Two days ago."

"Who's the father?"

"She didn't say."

"I'll talk to her." We mostly sat silent for the rest of the journey home. At least, I thought he had more important things on his mind that my dalliances. I noticed, for the first time, that he had a bald spot over which he was combing his long, black hair.

I had a difficult relationship with Rachel. She resented being a preacher's daughter. She was expected to behave better than her friends, attend endless religious services, and avoid the appearance of evil by foregoing parties and events that we didn't deem appropriate for her station in life. In short, she was a rebellious teen age girl and the object of much of her animosity was her mother. Rachel respected her father and was affectionate with him, partially I am sure to make me long for the same.

Her resentment of me grew after I had begun working, four years earlier, and traveling about ten days a month to install and maintain computer and word processing systems at several different organizations. With more money to spend on her, I thought she would be happier, but no, she played the guilt card. "You're never here, Mother," was her frequent refrain. She also saw in me the changes in clothes, hairstyle, confidence, and assertiveness that I tried to downplay when at home. She had despised me for being a lowly preacher's wife; now she was jealous that I was a woman enjoying a measure of independence and success.

And, of course, I blamed myself. If I hadn't been fucking around...

So, now she was about to enter her last year of high school and she was pregnant. What to do? Our church was firmly, and unequivocally, opposed to abortion.

Rachel was not especially attractive. She had inherited her father's sharp facial features and my tiny boobs. She didn't attract a lot of attention from boys and had never had a real boy friend. She was in the awkward in-between social category, worrying about falling into a group in the lower fringe of high school society and striving unsuccessfully to be in the higher strata of cheerleaders, athletes, the beautiful, and the rich. I knew the feeling. I had been there. I had excused my failure to achieve high school popularity with my dedication to religion. I had rather enjoyed being a martyr to my beliefs. Rachel felt no such enjoyment.

I sat down with her as soon as we got home – my long and exhausting return from Skopelos notwithstanding. "Your father tells me you've got a problem."

"Yes. I think I'm pregnant." I resisted the temptation to ask who the boy was. Tears ran down her cheeks. She would be pretty, I thought, if she would get that petulant look off her face.

"You're not sure?"

"No, but I've missed two periods and I'm throwing up."

"Have you told anybody?"

"Only Lizzie." Drat! Lizzie was a devious and conniving little girl – and Rachel's best friend.

"What do you think about it?"

"I don't want to have a baby."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." Her voice was defiant.

"Then," I said. "We'll take care of that."

She looked at me with surprise. "But what about Daddy?"

"This is women's business. It is not the concern of your father."

She collapsed into my arms and her voice softened. "Thanks, Mom." It was the nicest thing she had said to me for months. "God, please," I prayed. "This sin is on me. Not my daughter. If you must punish someone, punish me."

"You tell Lizzie," I said sternly, "that you were mistaken. You got your period. And never tell her anything different. And never, never tell anybody you had an abortion. That would not be respectful of your father. Not respectful at all."

"OK, mom," she said, wiping tears from her eyes...

I telephoned Carrie, my friend and lover, in Denver. I explained the problem to her and she said she would make an appointment for Rachel at Planned Parenthood. After she called me back with the date for the appointment, I said to my husband, "I going to take Rachel with me on a visit to Denver."

He looked up from the television and nodded assent. I noticed that he never again preached about the evils of abortion. Just like four years before he had quit preaching about the dominant role that men should assume in the Christian household. My husband was narrow-minded and not very bright – but he wasn't a hypocrite.

Rachel confided in me later that rumors were going around town that she was pregnant, had been pregnant, that she had a miscarriage – or an abortion. I told her, "Hold your head high and keep your mouth shut. The rumors will die down." She did. The girl, I thought, was strong. Maybe she would turn out fine.

I was thankful I could handle the situation. Before I started working and traveling I wouldn't have had any idea where to turn for help. But I couldn't avoid the thought that Rachel's pregnancy was the influence of the baleful evil eye placed on me by the old woman in Greece. Hopefully, I had paid the price of sin and the spell had been lifted by a loving God. My hope, it turned out, was premature.

I was on my best behavior for three months after the Rachel affair. Appearances of virtue and propriety had to be maintained in the face of rumors that swirled around Rachel. I even turned down several attractive and well-paying jobs to stay home and care for my husband and children. Rachel and I became much closer. We were sisters-in-arms brought together by adversity into a feminine alliance in which no men could intrude. Her body belonged to her, I counseled, and her alone. Sex was a decision she reserved to herself, not to blandishments of a hot and heavy male. She should be prepared when she made the decision to have sex. We put her on birth control pills and I bought her condoms she could carry with her at all times in a small, inner compartment of her purse – just as I did. I was pleased to see that she paid attention to me, and that she began to share with me the details of her love life and her problems. She had been forced by her pregnancy to become sensible. Would that I have learned the lesson that I taught her!

The need for money – and my wish to escape, if only for a night or two, the obligations of marriage and family -- called me back to work. Without my income we were poor. My husband's salary was modest and, now, age 44, it was doubtful that he would ever attain a more lucrative church. He was a small town preacher. That's all. But I had discovered a life beyond that of a small-town preacher's wife and I didn't want to give it up.

Did my husband love me? Yes, in his limited way. And in my limited way I had come to love him. The power dynamics of our marriage had changed since I began working. Before, I had been his slave, although he would have called me his Christian help-mate. Now, I was an equal partner although I still pretended to seek his permission for my endeavors. He was perceptive enough not to take the risk of denying me and I didn't embarrass him – or jeopardize his preaching job -- by demonstrating publicly my independence. In our community, I was still the smiling, benign, mush-mouthed preacher's wife, although my transformation in manner and dress was all too obvious. I had evolved from being a mouse to a woman with just a touch of the peacock. My more stylish and confident demeanor was noted with resentment by a few dowdy members of our congregation. Small town life has its attractions, but mediocrity is a social standard which is strictly enforced.

And so it was, after three months of devoting my life to family, I went to Kansas City with jobs that would keep me busy for several days. To put it bluntly, I was also in the mood to get laid – and Kansas City was known territory for me. I was familiar with a couple of single bars in the city. However, my mentor and guide, big-busted Sue, was out of town during my visit and I would be on my own. That didn't bother me. I had gone out alone before. I was a veteran, I told myself, of the singles scene. I could take care of myself. Thus, on Friday night I planned to make an appearance at a singles bar. Then, next morning, hopefully after a rewarding and recreational evening and night, I would drive home. I selected my sexiest dress for the occasion, a scoop-necked flowery print with spaghetti straps. I wasn't brave enough to go braless, so I wore a sheer, low-cut, push-up bra that emphasized what little cleavage I had.

I showed up at the bar about nine p.m., sat down by myself, and ordered a gin and tonic. I was disappointed no men there there of my previous acquaintance, but, shortly, I was invited to join a group of men and women sitting at a table and drinking beer. I didn't know any of them, but they were a congenial crowd, all of them a few years younger than me. I joined them in drinking a couple of beers and then they decided to continue the party in an apartment in which one of the couples lived. "Would you like to go?" they asked me.

I gulped down the last of my beer and said, "Sure." A couple of men were looking pretty good.

The apartment was small but pleasant, with a single bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen nook. Everybody contributed beer to a large ice chest full of beer and the hosts set out several bottles of liquor. One of the men asked me what I wanted and I said, "Gin and tonic."

He mixed the drink and brought it to me. Soon, we were all dancing to the heavy beat of the stereo. I was happy. There were ten of us, six men and four women, crowded into the living room. Somebody turned off the lights. I finished my gin and tonic and found my way to the bar and, in the dark, slopped some gin into a glass, added a few ice cubes, and returned to the dance floor, sipping my drink. We cranked up the stereo and reeled and rocked around the living room in the darkness, moving from one to another quickly, coming together to press against and feel the sex of your partner, and then sashaying away to find another. It was hot and sweaty and sensual.